LANGLEY, BC — The British Columbia Trucking Association (BCTA) said it is not surprised that a remote sensing study of truck emissions in the Metro Vancouver region confirmed that most trucks are running clean.

The study, conducted during the summer and fall of 2012, measured truck emissions to determine whether a mandatory AirCare-like emissions program for trucks would b necessary.

The BCTA has long held that such a program would be “wasteful and unnecessary.”

“The Metro Vancouver study confirms what we already knew,” said Louise Yako, BCTA president and CEO. “The diesel engine emissions standards introduced in 1994 and tightened further in 1998, 2004, 2007 and 2010 are yielding impressive results in terms of reduced air emissions from trucks with diesel engines.”

“A large-scale AirCare-like emissions testing program for trucks would impose unreasonable costs on the industry and produce very limited results,” added Yako. “As older trucks are retired and replaced with newer, cleaner trucks, diesel emissions will naturally decline over time, making an onerous and expensive testing program unnecessary.”

BCTA estimates that model year 2007 and newer trucks currently account for 35 percent of the heavy-duty truck fleet across the province. BCTA also estimates that, based on a fleet replacement rate of 5.5 percent per year, model year 2007 and newer trucks will make up more than half (52 percent) of all heavy-duty trucks in BC by 2015 and 63 percent of the fleet by 2017.